A Shadow of Guilt(46)

She felt him turn her around and kept her eyes closed, too scared to look and see that gorgeous physique up close. That physique that had taken her to heaven and back more times than she could remember during the previous night and then again that morning. She’d never known the human body was capable of such pleasure, of such base carnal desires. Or that those desires could be felt, and met.

But more than all of that, she was too scared to open her eyes and look into Gio’s. To see the same expression she’d seen in them this morning when she’d woken to find him looking at her so intently, as if he could see all the way into her soul, where she hid her deepest secrets.

But she couldn’t avoid it. Not when Gio pronounced her clean and tipped her chin up with a finger. With the utmost reluctance she opened her eyes and looked up. Gio had stopped the water but they were still surrounded by steamy warm air, like a sensual cocoon. Lazily he put his arm out, hand touching the wall behind her. It was then that Valentina noticed the marks again, on his arm. The tattoo.

He saw where her gaze had gone and in an instant the atmosphere went from hot and sultry to cool as ice. He quickly took down his arm again, reaching out for towels. So fast that her head span, Gio had manoeuvred her out of the shower and was wrapping her in a huge soft towel and hitching one around his own hips.

Curiosity well and truly stoked now, Valentina followed Gio into the bedroom. He’d lifted the towel off his hips and was roughly rubbing his hair before running it over the rest of his body in a very perfunctory manner, clearly doing his utmost to get out of her room quickly. Valentina tried desperately not to let his naked back and those firmly sculpted buttocks distract her. Just looking at his powerfully muscled thighs made her think of how potently masculine he’d felt between her legs.

She hitched her own towel under her arms sarongstyle and ignored the fact that she was dripping water all over the floor. She went over and stood in front of a very naked and damp Gio. She crossed her arms against the betraying rush of heat to her groin.

‘What are those marks?’

Gio scowled and for a second looked endearingly young. Oozing reluctance he wrapped his towel around his hips and crossed his own arms, effectively hiding the tattoo in question.

Growing exasperated now Valentina reached out and pulled at his arms, making him loosen them, and then she held his left arm up, so that she could see the tattoo clearly. ‘Why on earth don’t you want to talk about this? It’s just a tattoo….’

Saying something finally, Gio bit out, ‘Exactly, it’s nothing.’

He tried to pull his arm back but Valentina held on tenaciously, inspecting the uniform black ink marks. Out loud she said, ‘They look like roman numerals … some kind of a date? Four … five …’

She could read the first part, but the last piece eluded her—her knowledge of roman numerals only went up to about ten but this was clearly a much larger number, and as she realised this, she also realised the significance of four and five. Mario had died on the fourth of May….

Valentina dropped Gio’s arm and looked up at him. She could feel the blood draining southwards. Gio cursed under his breath and guided her to the bed to sit down on the edge. He stood in front of her and admitted with stark reluctance, ‘It’s the date Mario died.’

Valentina’s belly clenched hard. Every line of Gio’s body was screaming at her to stay out of this.

‘But …’ She tried to formulate words, to understand. ‘Why?’

Gio cursed again and turned away, pacing impatiently to the window, presenting her with his rigid back. Without turning around he said bleakly, ‘I needed to mark the date … when Mario’s life ended, and mine.’

Before, Valentina knew she would have jumped down his throat and reminded him that his life hadn’t ended. But after what he’d told her of his experiences she had to concede that it had ended on some level.

After the intimacies of the previous night it was very hard to call up the rage she’d clung to for so long. This is what she’d been afraid of.

The thought of him asking some stranger to carve an indelible mark into his skin made her feel unaccountably emotional. Before she knew what she was doing she’d stood up and went over to Gio. She inserted herself between him and the window, his jaw was as rigid as the rest of him and he looked at her warily.

Dropping her gaze to his arms, she once again undid them from where they were crossed so tightly. She took his marked arm and held it out again, turned up so she could see the tattoo. With her finger she traced the lines, feeling the indentation in his skin, marked for ever with this brand of the date her brother had died.